Bandits beware. If you’re trying to cheat the World Handicap System, you may want to think again.
The maximum your handicap is able to rise in a calendar year is FIVE strokes.
Want to know how they came up with that? Get your calculators out. You might need one.
When it was announced the WHS would use an average of the best eight from the last 20 scores, alarm bells went off for savvy players.
With golfers encouraged to put in ‘acceptable’ scores to count, whether competition or social, there was the fear some players might be less than honest.
For the more committed among the larcenous, there was the prospect they could flood their record with a raft of quick – bad – scores and wait for their handicaps to soar. Just in time to run off with a host of trophies.
But the WHS has built in protections to ward off those who aren’t as scrupulous as the rest of us.
It also endeavours to protect the hard work of those who have simply hit a bad patch of form. Within it, there is a suppression mechanism that prevents individual marks going up too severely.
It’s known as ‘The Cap’.
WHS hard and soft cap: How do they work?
It works by finding an anchor point, or a player’s low handicap index. This is the lowest handicap index a golfer has achieved within the last 12 months.
The cap then limits the increase of that handicap index, again over the rolling 12 month period, “measured against the player’s lowest handicap index within that period of time”.
